The boy is totally into princesses. 

He has decorated our powder room sink thusly:

On Sunday, he wandered about shirtless except for an Ariel sticker on his torso.  He considered this getting dressed.  He asked me to pick up a pair of pink princess sunglasses for him at Target. 

I’m not entirely sure what the appeal is–he’s never seen any of the movies and doesn’t really even know their names or what they do.  Part of it is just exposure at school, I’m sure.  I see the Princess pandemic as a direct result of aggressive Disney marketing strategies, nothing more.  Disney figured out that they could make a whole lot of money on the Princesses.  (They also then learned that girls grow out of the Princesses around age 7 and have now come up with Disney “Fairies” as a way to move on but still buy plenty of branded merchandise.)  Moreover, as is noted in a popular children’s book, “Princesses don’t DO anything!”  All the Disney princesses basically sit around looking pretty and waiting for their prince to come.  Please do not post something about how Belle is different, just because she (gasp!) READS.  A longer and more eloquent discussion of this can be found here.

Of course, I grew up on a healthy diet of Disney movies and I seemed to have figured out what to do with my life instead of just waiting around, but I still think it gives the kids some troubling messages. 

The funny thing is, I find that although I’m generally very anti-Princess for girls, I find myself much less so anti-Princess for my boy.  I think I just support anything that turns accepted stereotypes on their heads, though I should sit down and have a talk with him about why I’m not a fan of Princesses. 

But I might have to ask him to take off his pink glitter sunglasses first. 

The boy is obsessed with Neil Armstrong.

At first, I thought this was another naming phase. At one point or another, all members of the family (and some friends) have had names corresponding to various TV shows. We have been Bob the Builder characters, Sesame Street muppets, and friends of Christopher Robin.  At school, the boy read a book about the first moon landing and since then he has been Neil Armstrong. At first, I was Sally Ride, Sapana mawashee was Buzz Aldrin, and Eric was the mysterious astronaut “Billwam.” I’ve since been demoted to Neil Armstrong’s mom (sad, but true) but Neil persists.

This has now been going on for about 2 months, and it’s to the point where the boy asks to have his clothing labeled, “Neil Armstrong” instead of with his own, given name.  He has built rocket ships out of cardboard, and loves to dress up at the museum:

But more recently, and somewhat bizarrely, he gets himself together like this:

This is when he is Neil Armstrong landing on the moon.  He uses the links to connect himself to his toolbox and then proceeds to walk around the house, dragging the toolbox behind him, taking large wide steps. If he’s wearing pants with belt loops, the box is connected to those.  He is almost always shirtless in this scenario, which  makes me wonder exactly what “moon landing” book they were reading at school.

The girl, of course, has a name in this parallel universe.

She’s the SpaceDog.

One of the things that I find remarkable about watching babies grow up is how much of what we, as adults, take for granted is actually a learned behavior.  Some of this is obvious, such as learning to toilet, or buttoning a shirt, but what I find fascinating is watching them learn how to eat.  The Boy has this down pretty well (in theory, I suppose, though not really in practice), but teh Girl is just beginning to figure it out.

The first time I tried to give her finger food, she basically swept it off the high chair in a futile attempt to grasp it in her little paws.  Poor thing got so frustrated she started bawling.  She’s better at it now, as you can see. She has this nifty little technique of raking up a bit of food, squeezing through her pudgy little fist until it is precariously balanced on top, and then quickly getting her fist to her mouth.

Raking it up

success!

Not to be outdone by the little upstart, the Boy had to show off that he can put food in his mouth too, so here’s that picture:

Still, the thing I wonder about is how we learn our emotional bearings, how we deal with the world, and how we deal with ourselves, as those are things not so obviously mastered.